Mass Hysteria? Strange Mayan Apocalypse Freakouts

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Despite a flood of debunking from news agencies and NASA, belief
in the upcoming Mayan apocalypse is apparently still going
strong.

From China to the Americas, people are reacting to the alleged
doomsday with more fear than skepticism, according to multiple
news reports. Space agency NASA is fielding hundreds of concerned
calls, and hundreds of members of a religious group in northwest
China have been arrested for spreading doomsday rumors.

All this despite the fact that the Mayan apocalypse is not going
to occur. The doomsday rumors arise from a misunderstanding of a
calendar used by the ancient Maya, whose civilization crumbled in
about A.D. 900. The date, Dec. 21, 2012, on the modern calendar
likely correlates to the final day of the 13th b'ak'tun on the
ancient
Mayan calendar. B'ak'tuns are 144,000-day cycles and one of
the units of time that the Maya used to keep track of the days
since their mythological creation date. Thirteen of these
b'ak'tuns would have been seen as one full cycle of creation.

However, there were no doomsday prophecies associated with this
day. Only two carvings have been found that refer to the date;
one brags that an ancient Maya king will still be praised that
far into the future, while another refers to the return of a god
associated with calendar changes. [ End
of the World? Top 10 Doomsday Fears ]

Nevertheless, modern-day cultures have brought their own myths to
bear on the Mayan calendar, leading to serious doomsday fears.
NASA is receiving 200 to 300 calls and emails a day asking about
the end of the world, a spokesman
told the Los Angeles Times. The agency maintains a website
debunking doomsday myths and is so confident that nothing
will happen on Dec. 21 that it's already released a press release
about the world not ending dated Dec. 22.

In Michigan, two counties have cancelled classes Thursday and
Friday, citing both fears about school violence after the
elementary school shooting in Connecticut last week and rumors
about the end of the world causing distraction, according to CBS
Detroit.

Finally, in China, splinter religious groups are warning of the
apocalypse, earning government crackdowns in the country, which
heavily controls religious freedom. In the northwestern province
of Qinghai, the government has arrested more than 400 members of
a group called the Church of the Almighty God, confiscating
computers, banners, books, cellphones and other items,
The Guardian reported.

Also in China, a farmer reportedly went into debt building
several doomsday
escape pods, steel-and-fiberglass structures meant to
withstand an apocalypse. As of earlier this month, none of the
$48,000 pods had sold.

Plenty of people scoff at Mayan apocalypse rumors, of course, but
there is evidence that humanity is simply a superstitious bunch.
The New York Post reports that Times Square celebration
organizers are warding off the bad luck of a giant, lit-up "13"
as part of the 2013 display by adding 13 "lucky charms," such as
a four-leaf clover to the number.

"Some people get nervous about the number 13," Tim Tompkins,
president of the Times Square Alliance,
told the paper.